NCT04909372

Environmental Labelling in a Virtual Supermarket

Impact of Environmental Labelling on Food Choices : a Randomized Controlled Trial in a Virtual Reality Supermarket

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 133 (actual)
• Sponsor: Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

A 2-arm randomised control trial (with and without labels) will be conducted to test the effects of an environmental label on food choices in a virtual supermarket. A sample of 130 participants will take part in two shopping tasks: 1/ selection of 3 products to prepare a home-made dish, and 2/ selection of a ready-to-eat dish. These two tasks will be repeated for two scenarios: 1/ participants will be asked to select the foods for usual meals, and 2/ participants will be asked to select the foods for environmentally-friendly meals. This experimental design will allow to compare food choices in the presence vs. the absence of an environmental label and to investigate whether the label is informative and likely to help individuals to choose more environmental-friendly food options when explicitly asked to do so.

Detailed description

See attached protocol documents

Conditions

• Diet, Healthy
• Food Selection

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Labelling	Food products in the virtual supermarket will display an environmental label on their packaging, from A (lowest impact) to E (highest impact). The label categories are based on the Product Environmental Footprint, a score recommended by the European Commission that evaluates the environmental impact of a food product based on 16 indicators calculated throughout the life cycle of the products (e.g., climate change in kg carbon dioxide eq, marine eutrophication in kg N eq, land and water use or acidification in mol H+ eq). Instructions will introduce and explain the environmental label to the participants as "In the virtual supermarket, each product will have an environmental label. This label describes whether a product had a negative impact on the environment (green house gaz emissions, water resources depletion, etc.) from A, lowest impact, to E, highest impact.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-05-25
• Primary completion: 2021-05-25
• Completion: 2021-06-11
• First posted: 2021-06-01
• Last updated: 2022-03-09

Locations

1 site across 1 country: France